Attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan
On March 30, 1981, Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States, was shot and wounded by John Hinckley Jr. in Washington, D.C., as Reagan was returning to his limousine after a speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton hotel. Hinckley believed the attack would impress the actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had developed an erotomanic obsession after viewing her in the 1976 film Taxi Driver.
Reagan was seriously wounded by a revolver bullet that ricocheted off the side of the presidential limousine and hit him in the left underarm, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, and causing serious internal bleeding. He underwent emergency exploratory surgery at George Washington University Hospital, and was released on April 11. No formal invocation of sections 3 or 4 of the U.S. Constitution's Twenty-fifth Amendment took place, though Secretary of State Alexander Haig stated that he was "in control here" at the White House until Vice President George H. W. Bush returned to Washington from Fort Worth, Texas. Haig was fourth in the line of succession after Bush, Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, and President pro tempore of the Senate Strom Thurmond.
White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy, and D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded. All three survived, but Brady suffered brain damage and was permanently disabled; he died in 2014 as a result of his injury.
On June 21, 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on charges of attempting to assassinate the president. He remained confined to St. Elizabeths Hospital, a psychiatric facility in Washington, D.C. In 2015, federal prosecutors announced that they would not charge Hinckley with Brady's death, despite the medical examiner's classification of his death as a homicide. Hinckley was discharged from his institutional psychiatric care in 2016.
Background
had erotomania and his motivation for the attack was born of his obsession with the actress Jodie Foster. While living in Hollywood in the late 1970s, he saw the film Taxi Driver at least 15 times, apparently identifying strongly with its protagonist, Travis Bickle, portrayed by the actor Robert De Niro. The story involves Bickle's attempts to save a child prostitute played by Foster. Toward the end of the film, Bickle attempts to assassinate a United States senator who is running for president. Over the following years, Hinckley trailed Foster around the country, going so far as to enroll in a writing course at Yale University in 1980 after reading in People magazine that she was a student there. He wrote numerous letters and notes to her in late 1980. He called her twice and refused to give up when she indicated that she was not interested in him.Hinckley was convinced that he would be Foster's equal if he became a national figure. He decided to emulate Bickle and began stalking President Jimmy Carter. He was surprised at how easy it was to get close to the president—he was only a foot away at one event—but was arrested in October 1980 at Nashville International Airport and fined for illegal possession of a firearm. Carter had made a campaign stop there, but the FBI did not connect this arrest to the president and did not notify the Secret Service. His parents briefly placed him under the care of a psychiatrist. Hinckley turned his attention to Ronald Reagan, whose election, he told his parents, would be good for the country. He wrote three or four more notes to Foster in early March 1981. Foster gave these notes to a Yale dean, who gave them to the Yale police department, who sought but failed to track Hinckley down.
Attempted assassination
On March 21, 1981, Reagan and his wife, Nancy, visited Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., for a fundraising event. In his autobiography An American Life, Reagan recalled,Speaking engagement at the Washington Hilton Hotel
On March 28, Hinckley arrived in Washington, D.C., by bus and checked into the Park Central Hotel. He originally intended to continue on to New Haven in another attempt to infatuate Foster. He noticed Reagan's schedule that was published in The Washington Star and decided it was time to act. Hinckley knew that he might be killed during the assassination attempt, and he wrote but did not mail a letter to Foster about two hours prior to his attempt on the president's life. In the letter, he said that he hoped to impress her with the magnitude of his action and that he would "abandon the idea of getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your heart and live out the rest of my life with you."On March 30, Reagan delivered a luncheon address to AFL–CIO representatives at the Washington Hilton. The Secret Service was very familiar with the hotel, having inspected it more than 100 times for presidential visits since the early 1970s. The Hilton was considered the safest venue in Washington because of its secure, enclosed passageway called "President's Walk", built after the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy. Reagan entered the building through the passageway at about 1:45 p.m., waving to a crowd of news media and citizens. The Secret Service had required him to wear a bulletproof vest for some events, but Reagan was not wearing one for the speech, because his only public exposure would be the 30 feet between the hotel and his limousine, and the agency did not require vests for agents that day. No one saw Hinckley behaving in an unusual way. Witnesses who reported him as "fidgety" and "agitated" apparently confused Hinckley with another person that the Secret Service had been monitoring.
Shooting
At 2:27 p.m., Reagan exited the hotel through "President's Walk" on Florida Avenue, where reporters waited. He left the T Street NW exit toward his waiting limousine as Hinckley waited in the crowd. The Secret Service had extensively screened those attending the president's speech, but allowed an unscreened group to stand within of him, behind a rope line. The agency uses multiple layers of protection. Local police in the outer layer briefly check people, Secret Service agents in the middle layer check for weapons and more agents form the inner layer immediately around the president. Hinckley had penetrated the first two layers.As several hundred people applauded Reagan, the president unexpectedly passed right in front of Hinckley. Reporters standing behind a rope barricade away asked questions. As Mike Putzel of the Associated Press shouted "Mr. President—", Hinckley assumed a crouch position and rapidly fired a Röhm RG-14.22 LR blue steel revolver six times in 1.7 seconds, missing the president with all six shots.
The first shot hit White House press secretary James Brady in the head above his left eye, passing through underneath his brain and shattering his brain cavity. The bullet had a small explosive charge within it which exploded on impact. District of Columbia police officer Thomas Delahanty recognized the sound as a gunshot and turned his head sharply to the left to identify the shooter. As he did so, he was struck in the back of his neck by the second shot, the bullet ricocheting off his spine. Delahanty fell on top of Brady, screaming "I am hit!"
Hinckley now had a clear shot at the president, but Alfred Antenucci, a labor official from Cleveland who was standing nearby, and saw Hinckley fire, struck him on the head, and began to wrestle him from behind. Upon hearing the shots, Special Agent in Charge Jerry Parr almost instantly grabbed Reagan by the shoulders and dove with him toward the open rear door of the limousine. Agent Ray Shaddick trailed just behind Parr to assist in throwing both men into the car. The third round overshot the president, instead hitting the window of a building across the street. Parr's actions likely saved Reagan from being hit in the head.
As Parr pushed Reagan into the limousine, Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy snapped his attention toward the sound of the gunfire, pivoted to his right, and placed himself in the line of fire. McCarthy spread his arms and legs, taking a wide stance directly in front of Reagan and Parr to make himself a target. McCarthy was struck in the lower chest by the fourth round, the bullet traversing his right lung, diaphragm and right lobe of the liver. The fifth round hit the bullet-resistant glass of the window on the open rear door of the limousine as Reagan and Parr were passing behind it. The sixth and final bullet ricocheted off the armored side of the limousine, passed between the space of the open rear door and vehicle frame and hit the president in the left underarm. The round grazed a rib and lodged in his lung, causing it to partially collapse before stopping less than an inch from his heart.
Within moments of the first shots, Secret Service agent Dennis McCarthy dove across the sidewalk and landed directly on Hinckley, as others pushed Hinckley to the ground. Another Cleveland-area labor official, Frank J. McNamara, joined Antenucci and began punching Hinckley in the head, striking him so hard that he drew blood. Dennis McCarthy later reported that he had to "strike two citizens" to force them to release Hinckley. Secret Service agent Robert Wanko deployed an Uzi submachine gun concealed in a briefcase to cover the president's evacuation, and to deter a potential group attack.
The day after the shooting, Hinckley's gun was given to the ATF, which traced its origin. In just 16 minutes, agents found that the gun had been purchased at Rocky's Pawn Shop in Dallas, Texas, on October 13, 1980. It had been loaded with six Devastator brand cartridges, which contained small aluminum and lead azide explosive charges designed to explode on contact, but the bullet that hit Brady was the only one that exploded. On April 2, after learning that the others could explode at any time, volunteer doctors wearing bulletproof vests removed the bullet from Delahanty's neck.